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Commentary

Who Interacts With Trump, Clinton On Twitter?

Twitter has started to play second fiddle to broadcast and stump speeches in the general election. Many of Trump’s more than 11.6 million followers and Clinton’s almost 9
million followers interact with the presidential nominees’ social media accounts on a daily basis.

Many who interact with either candidate often share similar characteristics.
The ListenFirst Media Platform has broken down the demographic and interest categories of such Twitter's users, noting precise and telling differences.

First and most striking is the
overall gender breakdown.

On Trump’s channel, between September 9 and 15, 66% of interactions were executed by men. The majority of users that interacted with Hillary
Clinton’s tweets over that same period were also male, but a smaller percentage at 55%.

Tellingly, Trump had a much weaker interaction with Twitter users outside the U.S. than
Hillary Clinton. A total of 71% of interactions with Trump tweets were enacted from American accounts, whereas Clinton’s number is lower at 61%.

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Trump’s top four
international audiences were in the UK (5%), Canada (4%), India (2%) and Nigeria (2%). Clinton’s were in the UK (6%), Canada (4%), India (3%) and Mexico (3%).

When looking at
interactions by geographic location within the United States, Trump and Clinton followers vary more concretely. The most populous Democratic and Republican states appropriately hold top spot with
their respective candidates.

Clinton had the highest percentage of interactions coming from California, at 12%. Texas was Trump’s most active state, with 8% of interactions on
his profile from the Lone Star State. California and Florida users also accounted for 8% each of Trump’s national twitter interactions.

Clinton’s top three states rounded
out with New York, garnering 8% of the interactions and Texas at 5%.

The insights also analyzed the top TV shows and genres that most highly associated with users who interacted with
each candidate. While largely similar, as can be expected from those who use social media to interact with politicians, there were a few small appropriate variations. More Clinton tweeters were
interested in comedy than Trump’s.

Finally, glancing at top general interests, while again largely similar, there were certain telling differences. Business was not in
Clinton’s top five interests, whereas 80% of Trump tweeters were interested in that topic. Again, Clinton's were much more interested in comedy movies and television (84%) than Trump’s
were (75%).

This article promises a good deal more than it delivers. Despite the plethora of words like "telling" and "striking," the behavioral differences noted don't appear to be much more than statistical noise. And they don't "tell" us much of anything, either. Must have been a slow news day ...

Appreciate the engagement, Phillip. I do agree that some of the data may be noise, and that the piece doesn't dive into the meaning behind the numbers. There are some constants like gender and location differences that can be used to frame short-term ad campaigns. Currently reading Silver's The Signal And The Noise, very wary to point out signals where there may be none. Thanks for the constructive thoughts.